Few people know this about me. I was once a roustabout on a sheep sheering team. It was 1989. I was a graduate student working on a project in Australia, and using the opportunity to travel around the country too -- but on a shoestring budget. While in Western Australia visiting a farm family at sheep sheering time, I found out that they were in need of some additional workers (roustabouts) to help with the sheering. It paid very well and in cash. For a poor student who couldn't legally work there this was an extraordinary opportunity! The farm hired a traveling professional sheep sheering team to do the actual sheering. These were four young rough men who traveled from farm to farm and were paid per fleece that they trimmed up. The faster they could go, the more money they made each day. There were thousands of sheep with incredibly thick coats of wool to sheer. A few had tiny little babies with them too -- which angered the young men -- apparently this should have been prevented, so the babies didn't slow down the sheering process. Every time a mother was next in line to be sheered, these young men would grab her baby and angrily smash him head first onto the floor and down the shoot to get it out of the way so that they could do their job without interference. Once the sheep was sheered, it left a large fleece on the floor -- which although made of clipped wool -- somehow stuck together almost like a lambskin rug and could be picked up and moved all as one piece. That's were the job of the roustabouts came in. As soon as that wool was ready to pick up, we jumped in and grabbed it in a special way to pick it up all in one piece and throw it onto the stack of other fleeces. Then we swept the wool bits out of the way. We moved fast and worked hard. The wool was covered with lanolin, so pretty quickly we were all greasy. Sometimes we also got squirted with milk from the lactating mothers. Then there was the blood. I never saw a sheep with fewer than a dozen bleeding gashes on them once they were done being sheered. Being a roustabout, was the dirtiest, grossest job I have ever done. No wonder it paid so much money! I remember looking out in the pen that held the freshly sheered sheep. They looked so naked, and injured with blood oozing from spots all over their bodies. It was the hottest time of the year, and now suddenly they had the full force of the sun bearing directly on their skin, with no shade anywhere in site. This would happen again in six months I was told -- when the temperatures might be freezing at that time. I remember discussing how disturbing I found this whole process with the farm family. I could tell that they had never really considered how cruel this all looked to someone who had not grown up around all of this and my perspective took them aback, but then they responded that this only happened twice a year, and the rest of the time, the animals were left alone in large pastures and had an idyllic life.

Many people think that because theoretically wool does not require killing the animals to get it, that it isn't ethically problematic. Never mind that the sheep I saw would soon be replaced with younger sheep, and the older ones would then be packed onto boats and transported live, amidst horrific crowding to some where in the Middle East, where they would be ritually slaughtered for meat.

I know that some people claim to have access to wool products from small farms where the animals are sheered more gently and never killed for meat. But keep this in mind; because of the existence of places like the one that I worked at, when anyone uses, wears or promotes using any wool to their friends, they are helping to normalize violence against other beings.

Being vegan is not just about diet. It is an ethic of non-violence and non-exploitation of others. This is why we don't buy things made of wool.

For additional information on the wool industry, here are a few links to check out: